In Their Own Words: Residents Remember Katrina

he destructive path of Hurricane Katrina reshaped New Orleans. The lives of so many were forever changed on that day in August, one year ago. Now, as the one-year anniversary of Katrina has just passed, New Orleans rebuilds itself with the same strong spirit witnessed during the hurricane. Here are stories from four anesthesiology residents told along the timeline of rebuilding, from evacuation to present.

Melissa Matte, M.D.
CA-2, Louisiana Resident Delegate
Ochsner Health Systems

Melissa Matte, M.D.

late-August weekend in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, on the beach with a few of my closest friends sounded like a great idea. I packed only a swimsuit, flip-flops and a T-shirt and headed for the coast. The hurricane heading toward Florida would provide us with a relatively cool weekend. On Sunday morning, we awoke to the news that the hurricane’s path had shifted and now our plans would as well. We were not allowed back into the city to collect valuables or prepare our homes for the storm. We scrambled to find any available hotel rooms. No vacancies were available until Nashville, Tennessee. Finally we managed to contact other friends who were in Destin, Florida, and offered to share their hotel room. 

We arrived in Destin, seven people, four dogs and one hotel room and anxiously rode out the storm. The lobby was filled with families from New Orleans awaiting any news or word of the city. Everyone fearing the worst, we finally begin to hear reports. The twin span was out, the levees were breached, the news rippled through the hotel. Gas shortages and road closures made traveling impossible. I spent the next few weeks in Atlanta, uncertain of the status of my friends, my house or my home, New Orleans.
I eventually made my way back to my hometown, Lake Charles, Louisiana. Finally I could take a deep breath and regroup. Hurricane Katrina was the topic of every conversation, but not for long. Two days after my return, Hurricane Rita was headed straight toward us. I evacuated once again, this time with my family to north Louisiana. Two more weeks would pass before we were allowed to return.

Fortunately my house in New Orleans was spared, and the city seems more like herself every day. All my favorite restaurants have reopened, and I can see live music any night of the week. But there is still much work to be done.

Kristie D. Osteen, M.D.
CA-3, Louisiana Resident Delegate
Ochsner Health Systems

Kristie D. Osteen, M.D.

t took three days before I was able to return home to my family in Georgia. Finally at home, I had no idea what type of damage my house in New Orleans had sustained or if anyone I knew had been hurt. At Ochsner, we were lucky because Orin F. Guidry, M.D., ASA President, and Alan Santos, M.D., department chair, worked very hard to keep the residency program running. All the anesthesiology residents and staff at Ochsner kept in close contact via a Web site formed by our former chief resident, Thomas W. Phillips, Jr., M.D.

Within a few weeks, Orleans Parish residents were allowed to return home. The city was desolate. National Guardsmen were present everywhere. They stood at various checkpoints in the city with their machine guns and makeshift roadblocks to thwart off looters. The requirement for passage was a valid form of identification. After passing through these checkpoints, I drove directly to my apartment. I was lucky. The few damages I sustained were due primarily to the five-week power outage. That first night back at my apartment was eerie. There was no one home on my street and no lights, except for the candles and flashlights from my apartment. The only sounds I heard were the National Guard Hummers patrolling the streets after dark.

Within a week of my return, power was returned to uptown New Orleans, and my neighbors began to move back home. Refrigerators filled with rotting food began to line the streets. Soon there were more refrigerators parked on the streets than cars. They were duct-taped closed and spray painted with messages of frustration. With no trash removal service, the streets became cluttered with garbage. Because of the lack of refrigeration, many residents relied on a few operating restaurants for their meals. The lines at these restaurants were long, and they frequently ran out of food. It was unbelievable what had happened to this amazing city.

Melissa B. Russo, M.D.
CA-3, Chief Resident
Ochsner Health Systems

Melissa B. Russo, M.D.

orn and raised in New Orleans, I can say it is great to call the Crescent City home. Though the effects of Hurricane Katrina will be felt for generations, no one can predict what lies ahead for our great city. But the resiliency of New Orleans is amazing. It is wonderful to see citizens cooperating to reach one common goal — the rebuilding of the city.

Ochsner Medical Center is one of three medical training facilities in New Orleans. Being located away from the downtown area, we were spared the devastation that Louisiana State University and Tulane experienced. We kept our doors open throughout the storm. Having our hospital functioning in New Orleans was crucial at a time when the city was at risk of losing its academic medical community. Ochsner not only continued to support all of its own residents, we also reached out to the rest of the medical community and took in residents and medical students who would otherwise have been displaced. 

The anesthesiology department at Ochsner Hospital is thriving. We were fortunate enough to be able to accept four Tulane anesthesiology residents, allowing them to continue their education in the city they call home. We have not only increased our number of residents, we have also gained several highly specialized staff from the surrounding area. The volume of cases in the O.R. has already returned to and is now surpassing pre-Katrina levels. We have more than doubled the number of obstetric cases we were performing pre-Katrina.

Although the city was physically devastated, the spirit of New Orleans lives on in the challenge of returning to the comfort of normalcy. It is not the history or the food or the architecture that make New Orleans so unique. It is the people who live here. It is the people who feel passionate about this fabulous city and are willing to return and contribute to the rebuilding of New Orleans. 

Brett E. Winthrop, M.S., M.P.H., M.D.
CA-3, President of the Resident and Fellows Association
Ochsner Health Systems

Brett E. Winthrop, M.S., M.P.H., M.D.

y now there is no reason to reiterate how Hurricane Katrina’s impact was felt across our region and medical community. After the dust settled, and it became clear that the next storm could be a weather report away, our hospital began to systematically evaluate our vulnerabilities by examining our successes and failures in the aftermath of this tragedy.
Everyone who experienced this natural disaster can tell you stories that emphasize how distressing the inability to communicate during the time of a crisis can be. As a response, our hospital created an Incident Command Center complete with devices, including satellite Internet connections and telephones, shortwave radios, cellular telephones with out-of-network area codes, secure television feeds, sleeping quarters, showers and restrooms, and protected generators to run the equipment for many weeks.

Our hospital continues to employ a “Team A” and “Team B” concept to designate essential personnel at the hospital and their backups in the event of an emergency. We quickly learned that this concept only works if you can get in touch with those people, and the command center should allow us to do just that.

For the residents and fellows, and through a generous donation from the alumni of the Ochsner Clinic to purchase text pagers, we also implemented a “Safety Net” messaging system through a local telecommunications company. In the event of an emergency, several administrators have the ability to send secure messages that will be relayed to all e-mail accounts and devices with text-messaging capabilities that the individual has provided to our database. Taking the lead from Ochsner’s employee emergency telephone line, we instituted a toll-free hotline for the residents and fellows updated daily through the command center with pertinent information that even allows voicemail for two-way communication capabilities.

The other major issue we tackled was that of facilities. We all heard the tragic reports of area hospitals losing power to their intensive care units and were lucky not to have faced that predicament last year. To solidify our infrastructure, among other things, we erected a nine-foot floodwall to protect generator switches and transformers, purchased secondary generator units to run our ventilators and support areas (radiology, laboratory, etc.) if our main generators failed, obtained portable air conditioning units for vital areas, added backup water supplies, installed shower stations and ensured adequate food and housing supplies for employees and physicians.

While these obviously represent large capital investments, unprecedented recent natural disasters and tumultuous relationships overseas have proven that you can never be too prepared for the events we hope never to face.